From the Editor | September, 2011

The time has come to take to the streets!
I’m not actually referring to the type of ‘taking it to the streets’ permitted in section two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Instead, I’m referring to celebration!

Perhaps more than any other month, September is a month in which Hamiltonians spill into the streets for a variety of festivities. The month is booked full of events including the James Street North Supercrawl, the Locke Street Festival, Canadian Country Music Week, Open Streets, and the CIBC Wood Gundy AGH World Film Festival. Less street-filling, but still crowd-gathering events include Festitalia, Telling Tales: A Family Festival of Stories, Ancaster Fair, and Apple Festival!

It is an exciting time to live in Hamilton.

What most exciting, however, is that people are going out and getting involved. Recall, for example, the four young McMaster graduates that spent their summer exploring Hamilton in their ‘I Heart Hamilton Tour’. People are starting to engage their city in a way that hasn’t happened for quite some time. This is critical. People on our streets are the life in the veins of any city. Something that I find to be quite compelling is that all of the events listed above as street-fillers were started less than four years ago! When combined, they are expected to draw well over
100,000 people to the streets of downtown Hamilton in the period of only one month.

It really is an exciting time to live in Hamilton.

Too often Hamiltonians find themselves disappointed in their city. My editorial in our August issue discussed, with disappointment, the ‘leadership’ of municipal government in Hamilton. This month, however, I would like to turn the focus in the other direction – onto the citizens of this city as they take to the streets in celebration. As they ultimately lead the charge that is renewing Hamilton.

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